By Rebecca Ungarino
In a stunning series of announcements on Saturday, President Donald Trump said the U.S. had captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and that the U.S. would now "run" Venezuela until a leadership transition takes place there.
For all of Trump's remarks about the situation in interviews, on social media, and at a press conference held with other U.S. officials, questions remained about how his administration would carry out its plans.
"It's a big risk," said Marc Gustafson, director of analysis at Eurasia Group. "The U.S. has never tried to manage a country remotely."
Gustafson, a former U.S. intelligence and security official who served as an intelligence advisor to former President Joe Biden, said the U.S. will likely "keep a large military presence off the coast and could act."
The U.S. transported Maduro and Flores to New York, Trump said Saturday. Maduro was indicted on charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy and cocaine importation conspiracy, among others.
"For many years after his term as president of Venezuela expired, Maduro remained in power and waged a ceaseless campaign of violence, terror, and subversion against the United States of America," Trump said, referring to Maduro's presidential election loss in 2024 to opposition leader María Corina Machado, who fled Venezuela last month.
Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize last month for her efforts to promote democracy in Venezuela. Trump said he hadn't been in touch with her and cast doubt on the notion that she could now take power.
"I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader," he said. "She doesn't have the support or the respect within the country. She's a very nice woman, but she doesn't have the respect."
His comment was notable for what it says about Trump's goal with Venezuela, said Nick Redman, the director of analysis at Oxford Analytica. Barron's and Oxford Analytica are both owned by Dow Jones.
"I don't regard that as accidental and I do think it is instructive," Redman says. "This administration doesn't want to do nation building or democracy promotion. It wants a 'win', and it wants the oil, and it would like more cooperation on drug interdiction and repatriations. So Machado is out of the running and they will work with Maduro's guys as they are actually in charge of the country."
The U.S. could now have a presence in Venezuela as it seeks to "fix" the country's "broken" oil infrastructure there, Trump said. Maduro said in an interview with the Mexican newspaper La Jornada on Jan. 1, just two days before his capture, that he was open to holding talks with the U.S. and receiving U.S. investment in the Venezuelan oil sector, Reuters reported.
Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves, but the industry there has declined under Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez. The U.S. will take "a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground," Trump said.
"That wealth is going to the people of Venezuela, and people from outside of Venezuela that used to be in Venezuela, and it goes also to the United States of America in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused to us by that country," Trump said at the press conference, which was held at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
When a reporter at the press conference asked Trump whether there would be U.S. military personnel in Venezuela as part of his plan to "run" the country, Trump suggested there could be. He said there would be a presence there "as it pertains to oil."
"They always say 'boots on the ground,' and we're not afraid of boots on the ground," he said. "We're not afraid of it. We don't mind saying it."
-- Reshma Kapadia contributed reporting.
Write to Rebecca Ungarino at rebecca.ungarino@barrons.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 03, 2026 17:37 ET (22:37 GMT)
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